Air France crash: Investigators find three more bodies

Search teams looking for an Air France jet that crashed in the Atlantic have
recovered three more bodies, bringing the total found to five.

Picture released by Brazil's Air Force of an aerial view of a boat near debris in the Atlantic OceanPhoto: AFP/GETTY

8:35AM BST 07 Jun 2009

The Brazilian navy made the discovery while searching the area where the first confirmed debris from the aircraft - and two bodies - were found yesterday.

Five Britons were among 228 people - including 12 crew, a baby and seven children - thought to have perished in the world's worst aviation disaster since 2001.

Yesterday's discovery came on the day French investigators said the communications system on flight AF 447, which was en route from Rio de Janeiro to Paris last Sunday, transmitted 24 error messages ahead of the flight's disappearance and its autopilot was not working.

Colonel Jorge Amaral, a spokesman for the Brazilian air force, said two male bodies were recovered from an area where the jet is believed to have crashed.

They were picked up roughly 400 miles (640km) northeast of the Fernando de Noronha islands off Brazil's northern coast, he added.

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Structural engineer Arthur Coakley, 61, from near Whitby, North Yorkshire, and oil worker Graham Gardner, 52, from Gourock, Renfrewshire, were among the five Britons on flight AF447.

Orthodontist Dr Jose Souza, Alexander Bjoroy, an 11-year-old boy who held a British passport, were also on board.

Londoner Neil Warrior - a PR director for Mazda Europe, aged in his 40s - was also on the plane, colleagues said.

Three Irish women - all doctors who had graduated from Trinity College Dublin - were also on the plane with a Welsh female friend.

Former Riverdance performer Eithne Walls, 28, from Ballygowan, Co Down, was travelling with her friends Aisling Butler, 26, of Roscrea, Co Tipperary, and Jane Deasy of Dublin, who was also in her 20s.

At a briefing in Paris yesterday, the investigators said the Airbus A330's communication system transmitted 24 error messages ahead of the flight's disappearance.

Paul-Louis Arslanian, the head of the French agency leading the crash investigation, said it was not clear if the autopilot had been switched off by the pilots or had stopped working because it received conflicting airspeed readings.

More than half of the 24 error messages - 14 - were sent within the space of one minute, from 3.10am BST to 3.11am BST.

The messages showed "inconsistencies" between measured velocities and indications of systems failures including the autothrust and autopilot, the investigators said.

But Mr Arslanian warned the error signals were "not designed for investigations" and only gave an indication as to the status of particular systems.

Investigators also said Air France had not acted on a recommendation to change airspeed-detecting instruments on the aircraft before the plane disappeared.

Alain Bouillard, leading the investigation, said Airbus had recommended to all its airline customers that they replace speed-measuring instruments known as Pitot tubes on the A330, the model that crashed, but "they hadn't yet been replaced" on that aircraft.

But investigators warned that it was too early to draw conclusions about the role of Pitot tubes in the crash, saying Airbus had made the recommendation for "a number of reasons".

Meteorologists said the Air France jet entered an unusual storm with 100mph updrafts that acted as a vacuum, sucking water up from the ocean.

The moist air rushed up to the plane's high altitude, where it quickly froze in minus-40 degree temperatures. The updrafts also would have created dangerous turbulence.

David Learmount, operations and safety editor of Flight International magazine, said: "The fact that the autopilot was not working is not the cause of this accident."

He said it was "not at all unusual" for the autopilot to cut out and added "it's not the cause, it's the symptom" of this accident.

"It's designed to cut out at any time that it receives conflicting messages, which we know it was," he said.

"It's designed to cut out rather than control the airplane in an unsafe way - it's not an intelligent system, it doesn't know which of the data are correct."

He said the pilots would have been alerted with a loud warning system when the autopilot disengaged.

US President Barack Obama said the United States had authorised all of the US government's resources to help investigate the crash.

France is sending a submarine, the Emeraude, to try to detect signals from the aircraft's black box recorders, said military spokesman Christophe Prazuck. The submarine is expected to arrive in the area next week.